Rooks Writes: Spreading the Word!

In this blog post from Future Balance, Finance Coach Chris Rooks makes it clearer what financial coaching can offer to you...

Hello everyone – I hope this latest blog finds you well. It’s been a really busy few weeks at Future Balance Towers! I’ve been out a lot marketing the company and chatting to potential clients about the virtues of financial coaching and how we can help them. It’s been almost perfect weather to have been out and about over the last few weeks, maybe a tad too hot, but we get enough cold weather so I’m not going to complain when the temperatures are as they stand. Plus the better weather, possibly combined with England’s performance in the World Cup, seems to have led to everyone feeling much happier which has been very obvious from a majority of the people I’ve spoken to!

As well as being out discussing Future Balance with the general public, I also had the pleasure of being invited into a local primary school in Swindon a couple of weeks ago to talk to their Year 6s (ages 10-11) about money as part of their Citizenship day. I found this a really enjoyable and rewarding experience as learning about money wasn’t something that happened when I was at school, but I’m firmly of the belief that the earlier children learn about money the better informed they will be when it comes to be part of their lives as an adult. It was also interesting to me to see how it varied amongst the children as to how much they were aware of money and it’s value, from some knowing almost nothing at all to a few having quite a reasonable understanding. All in all it was a fantastic day where I hope the children learnt a lot, and the first of many school visits I plan to make.

When I’ve been out and about recently promoting Future Balance and finance coaching in general, almost without exception the first question I always get asked is “What is finance coaching then?”. I will always explain a bit about it, and point them towards the website where there are some more details, but ultimately it is difficult to describe because financial coaching will be different for every person. I may be biased but I would suggest that probably 90%+ of the adult population would benefit from some form of financial coaching – but what they would require will vary from people who just want someone to review their products with them, all the way to the other end of the scale where people require a lot of coaching to help them get out of debt. So I thought for this blog I’d try to make it clearer what financial coaching can offer to you.

One thing that I should make clear as it seems to be a common misconception when I start explaining about Future Balance, is that financial coaching is NOT financial advice. There are a number of key differences between the two, but the main difference is that with finance coaching the sessions revolve completely around the client. The idea is that coach & client work collaboratively to firstly understand what the issues are that need to be resolved (i.e. why the client has approached a finance coach in the first place) and how these came to be, before working together to understand what steps should be taken to move towards any goals the client has established. The role of a coach is to promote self-awareness from the client and ask thought-provoking questions to help clients see outside of their model of the world. The finances themselves are important and a key part of the process, but to take control of your money there is generally a need to first understand the behaviours and habits that led a client into their current situation.

For most of us, the best way to conquer any issues or break any bad habits we may have, isn’t for someone to tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we should correct it. That may work for some people, but as a rule most of us will fall back into old habits soon enough because the key to changing habits in the long term is to form some sort of self-realisation of why that habit exists in the first place before moving on to fix it. Additionally there still needs to be some flexibility within the journey to fixing that habit otherwise that is another route to failure.

As a finance coach I am helping clients to understand initially what has led them to this point in their own time, and will try to encourage them to form solutions to how they can move forward without making the process too restrictive. Ultimately the end goal for most clients is to feel they control their finances, rather than their finances controlling them – this in turn leads to a healthier and happier life.

As always if you want to know more then you can get in touch via the contact page on the website, by dropping an e-mail to [email protected] or by calling 01793 731141 and we’ll arrange for your FREE initial consultation where we can understand what it is you’re looking for and how we can help you. 

Finally if you’re based in Swindon or the surrounding areas, then we will be attending Total Swindon’s Summer Business Sessions event on Wednesday 25th July at the National Self Build and Renovation Centre – tickets are free if you want to come along, more details can be found at the following link:

https://www.totalswindon.com/business/summer-business-sessions/

Get in touch if you have any comments about this blog, or any others, and as always I’m open to suggestions for future blog topics – I love hearing from you all!

Until next time...